Publish 3D DWF Files (Concept)

You can create and publish DWF or DWFx files of your 3D models and view them with Autodesk Design Review.

You can generate DWF or DWFx files of your 3D models with nearly the same visual fidelity as your original DWG files. You can create a single or multi-sheet DWF or DWFx file with 2D and 3D model space objects. To access single sheet 3D DWF publishing, use the 3DDWF, EXPORT. To access multi-sheet publishing with 2D and 3D model space objects use the PUBLISH command.

Recipients of 3D DWF or 3D DWFx files can view and print them using Autodesk Design Review.

For product information and a download link for the Autodesk Design Review, refer to the Products page on the Autodesk website.

For more information about using the Autodesk Design Review, see the Autodesk Design Review Help system.

Publish Single and Multiple 3D DWF or 3D DWFx Files

To publish a single 3D DWF or 3D DWFx file, use the EXPORT or 3DDWF commands. With either of those commands running, the model you are currently working on is saved as a 3D DWF or 3D DWFx file.

To publish multiple 3D DWF or 3D DWFx files at one time, you use the PUBLISH command. The Publish dialog box displays a list of all the sheet names of the drawing files that are currently open. You can determine which sheets are published to a 3D DWF or 3D DWFx file by adding or removing sheets on the Sheet Name list.

Publishing Materials

If you assigned texture mapped materials to your models, those materials can be published with the 3D DWF or 3D DWFx file. Texture map orientation and scaling that is set in the drawing editor is retained in the published 3D DWF or 3D DWFx file.

There are some limitations to materials publishing.

The Diffuse Map channel is the only mapping that gets published. If you use Opacity, Reflection, or Bump maps in your material, they do not get published.
Procedural materials such as Wood or Marble do not get published.

NoteBecause the DWF Viewer and the rendering engine are different, you may encounter some deviation in how the texture maps appear in the DWF Viewer.

Increase the Smoothness of 3D DWF or 3D DWFx Models

The smoothness of 3D DWF or 3D DWFx models is improved by changing the value of the 3DDWFPREC system variable. The setting for 3DDWFPREC ranges from 1 to 6. Higher settings greatly improve the appearance of objects in the DWF Viewer.

Note3DDWFPREC is a global setting that affects all objects in the 3D model. Therefore, higher values can result in very large file sizes.

Improve Performance with Large Models

Every object in your model gets processed when a DWF or DWFx file is published. When working with large models, you can greatly improve publishing performance by using blocks. For instance, your office model contains a basic cubicle arrangement of eight partition walls, a desk, and a chair. Those ten objects do not take much time to process by themselves. However, if that basic cubicle arrangement is used 100 times, it means that 1000 objects must be processed and the publishing time increases accordingly. If the basic cubicle arrangement is inserted into the model as a single block, those ten objects are processed once for each insertion.

You can improve publishing performance even more by grouping miscellaneous objects into temporary blocks. Once the publishing is complete, you can explode those blocks and continue working on those objects.

As a design gets closer to completion, you can create blocks comprised of portions of the model that are less likely to need further editing. If the first floor of the office model is not going to change much, create a block containing all of its components. During publishing, that block is processed as one object instead of each individual object on that floor.

3D DWF or 3D DWFx Unsupported Content

When publishing a 3D DWF or 3D DWFx file, some drawing content may not appear in the DWF Viewer. The content listed in the following table is not supported when you output a 3D DWF or 3D DWFx file.

Unsupported Content	Details
Animations and Walkthroughs
Block attributes
Font types (Various)	See the “Supported Text Fonts” table
Gradient fills (Hatches)
Hidden edges
Hyperlinks
Images
Layer information
Lights and Shadows
Material components	Bump, Opacity, and Specular texture maps Procedural materials (for example, wood & marble) Reflection and refraction Self-Illumination Shininess Translucency
Mtext (partial)	Bold and Italic text
Named views and cameras
OLE objects
Rays and X-lines
Section clipping and XClipping
Text thickness
Visual styles

Supported Text Fonts

Many text fonts are not supported when you publish a 3D DWF or 3D DWFx file. The following table lists the fonts that are published.

Supported Text Fonts
Arial
Arial Black
Comic Sans MS
Courier New
Impact
Lucinda Console
Lucinda Sans Unicode
Martlett
Tahoma
Times New Roman
Verdana
Verdana Italic
Webdings
Wingdings